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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22845634">Hospitality Emergencies Are Rare On This Vessel</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umpleby/pseuds/Umpleby'>Umpleby</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Picard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:48:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22845634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umpleby/pseuds/Umpleby</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Set before Episode 5. Idea from cicak. Agnes falls for one specific Rios hologram and its the one Rios himself finds the most irritating and he gets a complex over it because he totally doesn’t want her, what are you talking about.</p>
<p>With inspiration and borrowed elements from fiction by Thimblerig, galaxyostars, Talvenhenki and StrictlyNoFrills. This fic is for all of you, and of course for cicak.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agnes Jurati/Cristóbal Rios</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Agnes and the Steward</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts">Thimblerig</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/gifts">cicak</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talvenhenki/gifts">Talvenhenki</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxyostars/gifts">galaxyostars</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Someone wakes her from her frenzied thrashing. The smell of an old wool jacket, cool hands unprising her grip on the covers,  the low command for light.</p><p>Agnes focuses on slowing her pounding heartbeat before she opens her eyes. In the dimness, she sees the Steward sitting on her bed, reaching for some water for her.</p><p>I heard you, he says, on many nights. </p><p>She struggles up and lets him hold the water while she drinks (old memories of being comforted by her father as a child). She had always been prone to nightmares; the events at Chateau Picard have given her a terror of going to bed.  </p><p>The Steward puts back her tangled hair from her face, and in passing his long fingers stroke her cheeks. She leans back and closes her eyes, allowing him to go on.</p><p>I’m sorry to intrude, he says, but a good host wants his guests to sleep well.</p><p>She remembers she is in just a vest and knickers, and suddenly she doesn’t care. Maybe this is what she needs - sex with a hologram to make her feel something, anything other than the deep-rooted terror that surges up when her rational mind is turned off.</p><p>As if reading her mind, the Steward whispers her name, ghosts his fingers across her lips.</p><p>Agnes makes her decision. Catlike, she arches her back, pulls her vest off in one movement, and looks right at him, the challenge clear. After a beat the hologram fits his head into the crook of her neck and runs his lips over the hot skin of her collarbone, the wool of his sleeve dragging across her nipple and making her moan. She shuts her eyes and into her mind, unbidden, comes the image of the captain. </p><p>She runs her hands through the Steward’s hair as he pleasures her small breasts, the nipples standing out and proud in response. She inhales and holds her breath and at the edge of sensation, if she concentrates, is the smell of cigars and paper books.</p><p>She tugs at his jacket and it vanishes as it comes undone, and then she kneels on the bed in front of him and unbuttons the white linen underneath. She runs her hands over his shoulders, searching for the breadth of that other chest she had wanted to have appear in her dreams.</p><p>Perhaps she looks guilty, but there is the hint of a smile on the Steward’s face as she tugs at his belt.</p><p>He murmurs sweet nothings as he slips off her remaining scrap of clothing and cups her mound, feeling into her. As his clever fingers make her slick, she closes her eyes and wills him to be the captain, cigar in the other hand, stroking the inside of her.</p><p>Soon enough she is underneath the Steward as he penetrates her; he increases the tempo and she loses herself in the urgent slap of flesh against flesh. She falls as from a great height into the middle of that feeling of being out of sight of land on a surging sea, and the sea drowns her terror.</p><p>Captain, she chants in her mind, and when the sea surges up to drown her too, she cries aloud without full knowledge of it: Cristobál! Cristobál!</p><p>As the Steward gentles her back into the here and now, and settles the covers round her, he holds her gaze for a long moment. </p><p>You can call for me by my name, he say. It’s Cristobál.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Agnes and Cristobál</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He notices she is avoiding him, and won’t even meet his eyes. He has become used to their quiet time together on the bridge at ship’s evening. She hasn’t shown for the last two.</p><p>Women, he thinks. He tries to put her out of his mind and nearly lasts the day. He must find out, he decides at ship’s evening, otherwise he will sleep even worse than usual. He decides to ask the holograms. </p><p>Yes, says the EMH, brow furrowed, yes. Dr Jurati is medically fit for all activities, it says, giving him a meaningful look. Problem is, he can’t figure out what that look bloody well means.</p><p>The ENH - that gossip - just grins widely. And then denies all knowledge of the lady’s state of health. But I’m here if you need me for navigation emergencies captain, it says cheekily. Just before he waves it away in disgust, it chirps: best of luck!</p><p>Which leaves Emmet. Emmet looks sadly at him and shakes his beard. Living alone, Cristobál, Emmet tells him, has made you a coward. Time was when you would have made a noble lady like Doña Inés happy. But all you do nowadays, cabrón, is sulk like Achilles in your captain’s chair. Ése, he goes on to say, that hospitable one - he’s got in ahead of you, old man, he’s been very hospitable indeed.</p><p>When it sinks in, and he does claim a mean and petty credit for this, he doesn’t break a single thing on the bridge. He only starts to throw things once he is safely barricaded in his room, but of course they all go right through the damn EHH. He can’t bring himself to get the fellow to stay solid, or command him to bleed when hit.</p><p>What did you do to her, he roars, until the EHH says, I did it with her, not to her. Don’t you see, Cristobál, she has nightmares, she is alone, she is terrified.</p><p>And then the revelation that breaks him utterly: she wants you, but you keep her at arm’s length. She pretended I was you, she tried to hide it, but it was you every time she closed her eyes...And she feels guilty, but she sleeps better. Fewer nightmares, and after I visit her again, maybe none.</p><p>You won’t visit her again, spits the captain. You stay away from her, you understand?</p><p>The EHH draws himself up. She only thinks she wants you, he says. It’s me she expects now. You want to change the lady’s preference, captain? he says. You have a lot of work to do. He fixes him with a look of contempt and shimmers away.</p><p>My holograms are laughing at me, thinks the captain. And the thought that she, too, might be, leads him, hungry for a reckoning, straight to her.</p><p>She is flustered and nervous and can’t meet his gaze. Her room is decked with apple blossom, and the smell of it enrages him. </p><p>He stills himself, makes for an armchair, forcing politeness out of her. Oh do please sit down captain....breathing shallowly and touching her mouth as she does when on edge. May I smoke? he asks. </p><p>When he lights up, he looks her up and down, deeply resenting the hold she has over him. She’s not particularly pretty, or well put together, or shapely, yet he wants to tear off her clothes and throw her on the bed; he wants to grab her on to his lap and kiss her senseless, he wants to shout his name into her flesh until she forgets there is any Cristobál but him. But he invites her to sit opposite him and limits himself to a question, bitten off at the end:</p><p>I hear you haven’t been sleeping well - ?</p><p>And just like that the blood rushes to her face and she trembles. She knows he knows, and from the glint in his eyes she also knows it’s no small matter to him. It undoes her and she buries her face in her hands. </p><p>Agnes, he says softly. I want you to sleep well. </p><p>Ah, what was it that Emmet had said about courage? This opening-up, the pain of it needed a great deal of courage...</p><p>I don’t sleep at all well myself, he continues. My nightmares visit me by day too. </p><p>His teeth clench themselves and he has to drag on his cigar for a good while. </p><p>I don’t know how long it will be before our  brief days on board end, he says. I want your happiness to last at least as long as this blossom does. So...the Steward, he wants your happiness too. We all do.</p><p>And then after a beat, his voice hoarse with the strain of it: it’s only difficult for me because I’ve fallen in love with you. I didn’t expect to, I should have told you, but I’m a coward, I didn’t want to make that effort...and given the - he gestures out of the window at the lights sliding by - the nature of our mission, shall we say, the danger...I didn’t want to open that door....</p><p>She is looking at him with her mouth open, her tears have stopped with the shock of his confession, but her questions remain to the bitter end: why? How could you fall in love - with me? Her manner is en garde, she suspects a trick. She turns a shade colder as she says: is this even true?</p><p>Yes, he says. Yes, Agnes, I swear it on the love I had for my mother as a child, and I’ve never felt a truer emotion. You don’t believe me, but I needed to tell you, and also that I know about you and him, and even though it cuts me to the quick - he taps his chest with his cigar hand, ash in his lap - even though I want you to turn to me instead, because I’m the real one, I’m flesh and blood and I want you...he trails off...I want your happiness more.</p><p>He watches her for a moment and then leaves.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The End</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That night there is a knock on the door and he blearily puts his book aside. He feels exhausted in every pore, hollow, his thoughts like flies around a corpse and any hope of rest but a mirage in the desert.</p><p>Come, he says, as he re-lights his cigar. Elnor again, he thinks, that boy has no concept of time or privacy, and has taken to turning up unannounced in the crew’s cabins to spread the Way of Absolute Candour.</p><p>His heart misses a beat when he sees it is Agnes. Dressed in her usual shapeless clothes and with mussed hair and eyes that look as if she’s been crying.</p><p>She steps inside the room and waits for the door to fully shut. She looks him over carefully, as if searching for something, some specific thing she can’t identify until she sees it.</p><p>She spots his cigar and smiles a little, and inhales. Then she takes his free hand in both of hers, with the tenderness she would use if it were a newborn animal of some kind, and raises it to her lips.</p><p>Afterwards, they both lie with their fingers entwined, looking at the ceiling. He has begun on a fresh cigar. He loves the way she wraps his free hand in both of hers, the way she caresses it. Part of him feels this is wrong, this heavy calm filling all of his body with the gentle relentless force of a tide that won’t stop coming in, flushing the old blood-spattered images in its path away, in time to the steady beat of his heart.</p><p>Not wrong, the Emmet in his head reminds him, just unfamiliar.</p><p>She is happy, Agnes tells him, very happy, and he laughs when she says, with some trepidation, that she hopes the Steward understands. But it’s a gentle laugh. He even feels kindly towards the Steward tonight.</p><p>He raises himself on an elbow and studies her body; doesn’t let her fold in on herself. He notes the bruises he has caused with his grip; in his haste and his need he hadn’t been gentle, or considerate. It was a tsunami of pent-up feeling that he unleashed upon her. There are hickeys upon her belly and thighs and the curve of her behind. He remembers how he pinned her by the wrists as he thrust into her, and how he held her back from her climax until she said his name over and over, until it became a frenzied shout. </p><p>Now he asks her forgiveness and she blushes, touching his face gently and taking  his fingertips into her mouth. It’s a sweet unnerving feeling when she nestles close to him and explores his skin wonderingly.</p><p>She confesses that yes, it was him she was thinking of when the Steward made love to her, and frets out loud that she did wrong. We’ll square it with him, he says, We’ll make sure it’s fine. And notes that he’s now saying ‘we’.</p><p>Just as she is slipping into sleep he tells her why he has fallen in love with her. He’s not sure he finds all the right words, but he is convinced she understands. Because you’re like a pool of clear water where the light plays, he tells her, because I remember that goodness is before me when I hear you speak, because your wonder at the world is a balm to my desperate ego, and then I can take off a part of my broken armour, which never fit anyway, and rubs in all the wrong places.</p>
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